


the sound of a gentle word

by softgrungeprophet



Series: God, Chuck, and God-Chuck [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Chuck Shurley is Not God, Chuck is God, Coda, Gen, Introspection, Prophet Chuck, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 16:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6762313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softgrungeprophet/pseuds/softgrungeprophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In the beginning, there was me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The story

Chuck Shurley started off as just a baby. Little curls and big blue eyes and tiny fists. Developing movement and thought and understanding. Nothing extra attached. Tiny spaces between cells for something to take residence in.

He became a teenager and his eyes stayed blue and his hair stayed curly, and he started growing taller and got headaches and anxious stomach pains. And the spaces filled in with pure light. Nagging thoughts, strange dreams, prickling behind the eyes. Glasses helped, and clarified things close to his face.

He became an adult and stopped growing. Small hands and feet, nervous and shy, staying in his room writing nonsense as his headaches grew worse. Of course he never mentioned them. Struggled through college and kept to himself, squinting at a piece of paper and parsing his strange, strange dreams.

Sometimes he swore his dreams came true.

Other times he swore he saw things in the shadows.

He began to turn his dreams into deeper drafts.

The headaches came more frequently, and the dreams came out of sleep and pounded his head day and night, only easing by siphoning onto paper and downing beer and whisky and rum with cola. Living alone, he found himself in a cluttered den of literature and TV static. Papers everywhere, empty bottles and cans, stains on the furniture and dust on the counters.

He ate takeout pizza with his alcohol, hazy and dulled so he could sleep on the bumpy couch or sometimes his bed--when he could make it up the stairs.

Two tall boys and a man in a trench coat. An amulet unfamiliar. A tingling at the back of his head.

Sometimes he lost time. Five minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, entire days he couldn’t remember. A vague light all that came to mind. Sometimes he got snippets of people he’d never met, separate from his dreams--his visions.

His hands shook.

When he stood with the angel in the trench coat. That light, blaring through the house, filled his eyes with the strangest familiarity. Singing between his cells and behind his eyes and he could hear voices and music and the highest tone running through his bones. He must have said something to Castiel but he didn’t know what. He felt more like a passenger in his own body than anything else.

More years gone by, leaves falling from the trees.

Sometimes Chuck got himself together enough to date. Most were run-of-the-mill, short-lived relationships. People he met through his editor, or the rare times he went to the bar for his alcohol instead of the liquor store. There were good ones and bad ones. Becky was not one of the good ones. He wasn't sure she was one of the bad ones either. She stole one of his manuscripts. She didn’t want him anyway. She was after the tall one. Chuck didn’t blame her. Sam had dimples and broad shoulders, and a kind smile.

All this time, and he lost more time, but also found himself more often riding in his own body feeling as though someone else steered him around. 2009, 2010? Sitting at his kitchen table, his hands typing but not really under his control. Yet still his thoughts. A strange automatic action. Whisky and the light from his computer, and the dim vision of Hell opening up out of the ground and the slow dive into the darkness.

His visions never stopped, when one or the other died or disappeared. Only changed in what they showed.

He slept more, relying less on alcohol, but found himself less aware of his surroundings, never sure what day it was, unable to judge the passage of time.

He heard conversations and prayers, more and more every day.

He stopped leaving the house.

It seemed every vision he had, something horrible happened. Black sludge, red blood, golden glowing veins and lights dropping from the sky. His bones ached and his ears rang when he saw the angels fall to earth. Their voices filled his head in a clamor of bells and screams and shattering glass. Asking for help, reaching out for him--but not for him at all.

Why?

Why did their voices come to him, shrieking for God and salvation?

Why did his shoulder blades and teeth and eyes hurt all the time?

Why did his body move on its own?

Who spoke in the back of his skull?

Murmurs like thunder saying “Sleep, let go, let me do this.”

“You are my son.” But Chuck’s father was a bald gay man, not a disembodied voice in the back of his head.

“I am your father. You are my son. You are your father and your son. Ghosts live in your atoms.”

Sometimes when Chuck looked in the mirror--on the days he was able to eat and move--he could have sworn he saw a rim of blue-white light around his edges and an abyss in the pupils of his eyes.

Wasting away. He bruised at the slightest touch and the bags under his eyes grew darker, like storm clouds under blue sky eyes.

He didn’t drink anymore but neither did he eat. Or sleep. His fingers typed out his constant visions, and the pain became something almost comforting. Always there. Normal. His roof leaked but he never did anything about it. His phone rang but he didn’t answer. The internet disconnected but it didn’t matter because he still had his word program, and when the electricity went out he had piles and piles of paper, and a ballpoint pen in worn-down, trembling fingers.

His awareness dimmed.

Nothingness.

He opened his eyes once to see firmer arms and steadier hands and the same old computer, but with lights on overhead and an electric hum. He went back to the nothingness.

The next time he opened his eyes he saw himself in the mirror, shirtless. He had weight. Muscles around his stomach and shoulders. Fat on his chest and thighs, around his waist. Lighter, softer bags under his eyes--somehow the color of them startled him. The blue reminded him of an ocean he couldn’t remember going to, with a pebbly beach and mountains and fog.

His mind went to that ocean and he rested there, formless, drifting in the sea breeze with the gulls. Admiring the steam rising from between the trees in the distance.

Sometimes he caught glimpses of blood and tears and sharp blades, but mostly he just floated in the tides with the jellyfish.

There were days he found himself thrown back and forth between the cold ocean, non-existence, and a warmly lit bar. Riding in his own head and seeing strong arms as he wrote unfamiliar words on his decades old computer plugged into nothing as a small dog clicked across the wooden floors.

He felt like vomiting.

He spoke to himself.

“Listen, Chuck.” He didn’t whisper, just spoke in a matter of fact way. “It’s better this way. I’m you. You’re me. I’m as much Chuck Shurley as you are Carver Edlund.” He leaned back on the booth, and watched the dog run back and forth. “I--We are a ghost, a prophet, an author, a God.”

The nausea wouldn’t go away.

Chuck couldn’t feel anything other than his burning eyes.

Gone, again.

Snippets.

High school girls and a stage.

Castiel with blood in his eyes.

The Beach Boys.

Black smoke.

A lone guitar. The one he bought in college.

Typing a thousand more words, a hundred thousand, a million.

A man even shorter than him. Pathetic. Sometimes on the verge of tears.

That dog again.

Pieces of visions of a woman so familiar he didn't know her name and thick fog and the boys with black veins streaking up their arms.

Back to the rainy ocean, disembodied, with his own voice echoing through the foothills—

”We should probably talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, so, I doubt this comes as a surprise to anyone who knows me but I have some complicated thoughts and feelings on Chuck's status as God.  
> After writing 1000+ words about those complicated feelings (which can be found as the second chapter of this or here on Tumblr: [click](http://softgrungeprophet.tumblr.com/post/143894498002)) I decided to write this.
> 
> I hope I conveyed my feelings properly.  
> Additionally, I'm not entirely sure what tags to include on this so if you think it might benefit from a certain tag please let me know.


	2. The meta behind the story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi! This is also posted on my Tumblr! It's a look into my thoughts on Chuck, and his status as God in season 11. It's not ALL of my thoughts but it's some of them.  
> I'd like to add that though this talks of really only being able to reconcile s4 Chuck with s11 God-Chuck by thinking of God as a parasite, my thoughts on God-Chuck are a lot more complicated than that and I have a lot of versions of Chuck in my head now, all mixed in varying ways.  
> Anyway I thought I'd post what inspired the main story that is the first chapter of this in a place it's easier to get to.

I still have a lot of complicated thoughts about Chuck and the way he was in last night’s episode of Supernatural.

Bear with me as I attempt to unpack my thoughts in a really long post. If readmores don’t work for you I apologize in advance.

So, Chuck felt off to me.

Basically the basis of my complicated thoughts is that even taking into account the kind of father, son, neither, both stuff that me and Sonya talked about, even taking into account that kind of stuff, I cannot be convinced that there is no Chuck Shurley. And you might say “oh, well, yeah chuck shurley is god” but that’s not what I mean. I refuse to accept the fact that Chuck isn’t some separate person that existed before, even as a reincarnation. I still feel like he and God cannot just be interchangeable. And there was a little of that in the episode I guess, moments that were more God or more Chuck.

Maybe I am just ornery.

But anyway I was thinking, last night at 1 in the morning while I was trying to sleep of course, that it seemed to me like a weird scale. Like there has been a spectrum from Chuck to God this whole time. Like that’s the only way I can accept that Chuck as being Chuck in my mind because he really felt wrong to me and I would not have approached God!Chuck the same way, honestly. Much as I enjoyed the episode, I still…. disagree, I guess.

Here’s me, as always, going “I liked this thing and respect why you did it but you’re wrong.” I mean i’ve been doing with this show for seasons that so why stop now, am i right? Of course it’s not that they’re actually wrong it’s that it is absolutely not what I’d have done?

Anyway back to the spectrum.

The way I think about this is there’s chuck, and there’s god, and they mix but they are not one and the same. More…. attached to each other than anything else. Linked but not necessarily One. Not entirely.

Like I think about it as though “In the beginning there was me” except that me is Chuck. Chuck is born, he’s this kid. He’s special obviously, there’s something there. Destined from birth to be God, or something. He’s a vessel but more than that and it starts early, with God already there from the moment he is conceived. A small seed of God I suppose.

But in his childhood he’s pretty negligible right? Maybe weird dreams and headaches.

But you know, he gets older, gradually God gains more of a presence. Unexplained events, divine intervention, blah blah. Worse headaches, worse dreams, and sometimes God is there. Like Right There, taking the driver’s seat.

Like you get to the point of season 4 and Chuck is that nervous wreck you see, with a drinking problem cause he doesn’t know how to sleep otherwise because of the horribly painful (and surely traumatic) visions he gets, and I imagine God is becoming more prominent in the picture whether Chuck is aware of him or not. And I think maybe he’s not. And you have, sometimes, God taking over like the end of Swan Song and you have, other times, parts of God melting through as part of Chuck’s personality as in the moment of chaos where he is talking to Castiel.

And I feel like that’s the only way I can see Chuck from “The Monster at the End of This Book” becoming God!Chuck from “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” right?

I mean, I’ve always had issue with the “Chuck is God!” thing. It always felt too simple to me, too…… It just never felt right and maybe it’s because I look at Chuck and find a lot to think about in his personality.

But it feels like to get to this point it’s a sort of…. Parasite-like effect.

Like God started out hitching a ride and he’s been slowly taking over and melting himself into Chuck’s personality until you reach the point where Chuck is still there, and you see that shine through at times but we never saw the full Chuck Shurley. Just parts of his personality peeking through a being that is almost entirely God having taken on parts of a messy human being yet still not understanding what it means to be human.

Straying from that, there’s Endverse!Chuck who I feel might be a Chuck without a God. Which sounds silly when you phrase it that way but you know what I mean.

Basically I feel like this Chuck in season 11 and even in episode 200 really isn’t… Chuck anymore. But rather, he is God who has pulled Chuck into himself and turned him into a facet of his personality.

And that’s basically the way I read this fancy Canon God!Chuck we’ve got going on in 2016.

But I never thought of taking the spectrum of Chuck to God and blurring it to this point, never thought about melding them that much. I always preferred… a little more separation, I guess. Part of it is I like thinking of Chuck as his own person and that might be due to some of the reasons I am drawn to him. The insecurities, blah blah blah. But yeah.

This melding is the only way I can really accept that this IS the same person (just changed greatly) because I cannot truly reconcile the Chuck that drinks himself to sleep and hits people with plungers with the Chuck that sits in a Heavenly bar writing about himself. You know what I mean? Sure there are parts. He’s a bit of a coward. A lot. I see where all the Archangels get there personalities from. That’s God, right there.

And I think–a lot of angels in vessels, they have to possess the vessel fully to function, right? I don’t think God is like that and I think all he needs is to exist and he can do whatever the fuck, of course, and that he’s hitching this ride and he can turn off the amulet or do what he wants without Chuck or anyone even noticing anything different.

Anyway. This got long winded so I’ll stop now.

I hope that dog in the bar is Gabriel.

Unrelated: I’d like to note that Chuck has had a guitar since season 4. Sitting on his dirty couch in his messy living room along with all his empty bottles and cans of beer and boxes of pizza.


End file.
